Go, GRO, go

NASA successfully launched its Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) from the shuttle last weekend. But it took a space walk and three hours of work before the observatory was spaceworthy. The shuttle flight, the first this year, took off only five minutes late, despite fears that bad weather would ground the craft.

GRO is one of NASA's four great observatories for viewing the Earth at all electromagnetic wavelengths ('Intercepting the messengers of cosmic violence', New Scientist, 30 March 1991). As it was being deployed, its antenna stuck, and repeated attempts from the ground and the shuttle to control the antenna failed. So two astronauts put on their spacesuits and went out to fix it in the first spacewalk to be undertaken since the explosion wrecked Challenger.

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